Another orient in early zionist thought: East Asia in the press of the Ben-Yehuda family

Eliezer Ben-Yehuda is mainly known for his role in reviving the Hebrew language and for struggling against ignorance. Yet a close reading of his family's press reveals the pioneering role of this enterprise with regard to the depictions of East Asia. Through their press, the Ben-Yehuda family introduced East Asia to the Jewish public in Ottoman Palestine at the turn of the twentieth century, while making a unique contribution to contemporaneous Zionist thinking, first, within the context of advancing the ideas of modernism and national revival, and second, by constructing another Oriental Other.